The Tissue Culture Core has as its major objective the acquisition, storage and culturing of various cells and providing these cultures to projects for in vitro evaluation of drugs. Cells to be cultured by the Core include primary neuronal cultures and neuroblastoma cell lines. These cell cultures will provide an early screen for cellular toxicity of new compounds as well as provide an in vitro model for experiments on signal transduction, intracellular calcium and trophic factor responses. Additionally, since loss of cholinergic markers in primary neuronal cultures shares some features with Alzheimer's disease, the Core may play a role in developing an in vitro model of Alzheimer's disease.